Friday, June 29, 2007

Possums, from what we’ve seen of Padma Lakshmi, it certainly seems clear that “she gets too hungry for dinner at eight” and wouldn't “bother with people she’d hate,” but that does that mean that, as Page Six is suggesting, Lady Rushdie is a tramp? As Sir Salman might have put it, the ground beneath our feet is shaky indeed. According to the New York Post:

“While [Sir Salman] Rushdie was being knighted by the Queen of England last week, [Padma] Lakshmi was spotted hanging out into the wee hours at the Rose Bar at the Gramercy Park Hotel with a well-known chef who was there without his spouse. ‘They seemed to be quite interested in what each other had to say,’ said a witness. ‘They were oblivious to the people around them.’ Sources say Lakshmi has also forged a friendship with an unidentified billionaire. A friend of the model said she and the chef ‘are just friends - and like any marriage, she and Salman have their ups and downs.’ A rep for Lakshmi declined to comment.”

Miss XaXa, ever the romantic, was duly horrified. “You mean that while Helen Mirren was touching Salman with a sword to make him a knight, Padma might have been involved with a different kind of sword?! Say it ain’t so!”

We reminded Miss XaXa that our own on-set source from last season had mentioned to us that Padma discussed divorcing Salman Rushdie as soon as a documentary on him was finished filming, and then there was the report in March about bearded lady Diane Von Furstenberg bemoaning the upcoming divorce as well.

Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi are headed for a divorce. So what's the big deal? Marriages of millions of people must be breaking up across the globe even as I post this blog. I think the duo must be given some privacy to sort out their personal mess rather than subject them to this huge media brouhaha.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - British author Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi, host of the television show "Top Chef," are getting divorced, just two weeks after he was awarded a British knighthood, his spokeswoman said on Monday.

"Salman Rushdie has agreed to divorce his wife, Padma Lakshmi, because of her desire to end their marriage," spokeswoman Jin Auh said in a statement.

Trixie, if you were ever the subject of intense media attention, and if there was daily speculation about your private life, you would read a thousand ugly press rumours about yourself, and you, your friends and your family would be constantly harassed for information by journalists. It is just possible that you might make a brief statement of the facts not because you were desperate for attention but because you were desperate for the attention to go away.I know it's less fun to understand your fellow human beings than to be spiteful and malicious about them, but do try.

For some reason, I feel sorry for Rushdie. Maybe it's because he's one of my favorite authors, but damn. Of course, a man with four failed marriages (I'm assuming they all failed and that none of his wives died) is the common denominator in those marriages, so maybe he's a right asshole.